


Pygmalion

by gnostic_heretic



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Body Image, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Roller Coaster, Established Relationship, Existential Angst, Flashbacks, M/M, Trans Male Characters, You're Welcome, i have given up on tags, you ever want to write about the passage of time and the weight of existing in a physical body
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-29 18:30:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20086804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnostic_heretic/pseuds/gnostic_heretic
Summary: Feliks, turned to stone, could do nothing but stand still.





	Pygmalion

In the fuzzy and vibrant land of his dream, painted with rough brush strokes, he crossed barefoot an unspoken path over the endless meadows. The soil was wet and soft under his feet, almost warm as flesh. 

He couldn’t remember a time when his body had been so light, and it was almost as if his soul alone danced, and ran, and swirled in a frenetic spiral, the flowers and leaves melted into one another, they bled into the sunlight and the horizon far beyond.

His destination, a temple, was glowing in white light.

His heart told him it was a bad omen; he decided not to listen. 

Had there been a temple like this, in the turbulent years of his adolescence? He could not remember. Yet it seemed oddly familiar, like a place he had visited in another life.   
The closer he got, the closer the scent of incense drew him. 

No, he could only remember churches. 

Small churches, made out of houses whose owners were long dead. Big churches, opulent and baroque, with walls of marble and frames of gold.

The eyes of the people and the eyes of the Lord fixed in judgement. 

What did they know about him? 

Nothing, it was nothing…

The closer he got, the stronger the light of the sun reflected on the white columns. 

Clean and simple.

He set his foot on the very first step: it was hot, like a fire was burning underneath.

Inside the temple, his lover was waiting for him.    
It was only when he saw the linen tunic wrapped around his body that he realized his own nudity. He felt naked, and ashamed— God had chased him out of Eden, and rightfully so. 

His body felt heavy again: it wa it was as if, after the lightness of his run, after his soul had been set free he had once again returned to his own skin. 

Tolys took his face into his hands, tenderly, he placed a single, red carnation behind his ear. 

Feliks wanted to run, to scream. 

_ Don’t look at me, no! _

But his lungs could not breathe, his ribs were stuck— and his legs could not move— his whole body, _himself_, so unbearably heavy and still…

In front of him Tolys smiled, he kissed his forehead. The freckles on his nose were all he could see. 

“To be half of a whole, that is our fate, my love. Until we meet the person who will complete us, and we can be one again. 

Are you not happy? You’re going to love forever in me. After all that happened, I have chosen you.”

Feliks, turned to stone, could do nothing but stand still. 

* * *

He woke up drenched in sweat and breathless.

He felt his hand— he could move it, each finger individually. 

The room around him felt unfamiliar and odd, striped in the light that filtered through the blinds, oddly white and empty. The bed sheets were slightly scratchy under his palm. 

Right. This was not his house.

He was in Kaunas, and—

Tolys slept next to him, curled up like a cat. 

His brown hair spread on the pillow like wings; a couple loose curls were on his face.

Feliks snorted. He could have adjusted Tolys’ hair, but the risk of waking him up was not worth it— and he seemed to be sleeping peacefully enough.

He stood up too fast, and his head got dizzy; the walk to the bathroom, half on his legs, half leaning on the wall, in spite of being just a few steps felt like an endless exodus. Each step was a muttered curse until he found the light switch.

Just a loud click, and the neon lights above the mirror flickered incessantly.

Feliks walked in, resting his weight on the sink.

The atmosphere of Tolys’ bathroom was suffocating, no windows and barely any room to move. The small space was barely enough to fit a toilet and a shower, but no, Tolys had insisted on getting a washing machine in there as well, ignoring Feliks’ plea to just put it in the kitchen.

Then again, it wasn’t like the kitchen was very spacious, either.

Feliks tried not to mind. He stared as the water started pouring down, the sound of it was a sweet relief from the white noise of the lights. White lights, white noise, it was so blinding. Cold water, on his cold hands— yes, that was exactly what he needed right now— he washed the sweat off his face, careful not to get his hair too wet.

When he reached for a towel, he could find none.  _ Tolys _ , he thought, in the sourest accusatory tone his mind knew. _ Why buy a washing machine, when you can just never wash your clothes, I guess. Or your towels. Same thing _ . 

He patted his face dry with the fabric of his shirt. Well, Tolys’ shirt, but he was sure he would not mind either. 

Feliks caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror, right as he adjusted the now-wet shirt around his chest, smoothing things down as much as he could.

A familiar sight, met with a familiar tightness in his gut. He wanted to avert his gaze, but mirrors always lured him. 

When you’ve had the same face for hundreds of years, it’s way too easy to take note of the changes. That morning his cheeks were flushed, turned bright pink by the cold water; there was a pimple-to-be, peeking from the side of his nose; the lines forming at the corners of his eyes did not surprise him anymore, but they disappointed him nevertheless. 

At least it’s not white hair yet. It might take a couple hundred years more for that.

Deep down, he hoped that it would never happen— or that he could die before he had a chance to see himself grow old.

When he was younger, Feliks had a morbid fascination with death, and the ways humans age, and die. He looked at the people around him, the children he had met whose funerals he attended, together with their grandchildren; he heard them say that eventually, they would be together again, in heaven. 

He prayed with them, knowing that in a few decades they would decay in much the same way.

He knew the process far too well. Sometimes he wished he could have joined them, too. 

But no, there was no sign of white hair, not yet at least; all he had gotten out of looking at his own head for so long was an inexplicable desire to buy some hair dye and become a ginger (albeit, a fake one), even if he had made that mistake once— and swore to never repeat it again.

He turned off the light, and just like at the end of a dream, everything went dark, and silent. 

* * *

Feliks walked back into the bedroom just to find Tolys awake. 

From his mouth came something that sounded a lot like a “morning”; half mumble, half yawn. Tolys’ bony hand slowly rose to his head, scratching at the mess that was his hair. 

“Yeah, good morning. How did you sleep?”

“Mmm.”

A very eloquent answer. He could tell that Tolys was in need of a cup of coffee. 

He looked at the clock: it was half past seven. 

“I’m going to wait for you in the kitchen, then.”

Tolys gave him a lopsided, sleepy nod. 

The striped light from the blinds had gotten stronger. It was odd and sweet, so intimate to see him like this, half-naked and half-asleep. 

The sun and shadows contrasted on his scarred chest, his scarred back, the knuckles of his hands.

The first time Feliks had seen Tolys, he thought he was homely, but he felt drawn to his gentle voice, to the way he sometimes stuttered and clumsily moved his hands when he spoke.

The first time Feliks had seen him undressed, he thought he had never seen a man so beautiful: breathtaking, the endless spots on his body were a trail to follow, and he was so eager to explore. They were young, and madly in love.

Feliks’ heart had skipped a beat when he had seen Tolys undressed for the first time in centuries. The now familiar trails were gone, crossed and torn apart by a multitude of cracks. Raw skin and flesh that had healed poorly, turned into spider webs that could never go away.

His first reaction had been rage, hot, boiling, screaming anger at whatever had happened to him, whom he loved so dearly, desperately mourning the body that he had so loved. 

With time, however, he understood: the beauty of Tolys’ body was not ruined, it had never been ruined. It had simply changed. 

He remembered walking into the Louvre, on a date with France— decades before, wide-eyed marveling at the Nike of Samothrace. Her torso stretched forward, proud, as if she was about to take flight.

It had never occurred to him to mourn the missing parts of her.

Would it even be the same, if her head had been there? The same energy, the same nobility?

With time, he had learned to trace the scars on the body he loved so dearly.

New trails to follow, there was so much to be loved in what seemed to be an absence. Seemed, indeed, because it was all there: Tolys was whole, complete. 

In his arms, the space of his ribcage was the same; the width of his shoulders, the weight of his body was there all the same. His scars were merely a part of a long story to be told. 

* * *

Flushed and distracted, Feliks had barely noticed that the coffee he made was about to spill all over the place.

He saved it just in time, just to accidentally overfill a cup a few seconds later.

“You got it all over the counter.”

Tolys’ voice surprised him—  _ when did he walk into the kitchen? _ — reaching from behind Feliks’ back, he grabbed the overfilled cup with haste, and drank it all in a couple gulps.

“Don’t worry, I’ll clean it up. Good morning, sunshine. Are you finally awake?”

“Sort of.”

“How was the coffee?”

Tolys shrugged. “It was good, thank you.”

“You didn’t have to come to the kitchen. I would have brought it in your bed, y’know.”

“And spill it all over my new blankets?”

“Excuse me? I got distracted!” Feliks crossed his arms. “Besides, your blankets are scratchy. And you tell me they’re new?”

“One hundred percent Lithuanian linen,” Tolys said with a nod. “It’s organic.”

“Organic,” he repeated quietly, tapping the hot mug on the counter.

How did Tolys drink his coffee that hot? The man had no respect for his own esophagus.

Feliks’ index finger twitched away from the heat.

It was then that he remembered something.

“I had a strange dream tonight, you know.”

“Me too,” Tolys said distractedly, “I dreamed that my office had been invaded by wasps.”

“That sounds gross..:”

Feliks breathed in, unsure whether this conversation was worth having or not. 

“I’ve been having this dream a few times, actually. Little things change, like, here and there, but the end is always the same… it’s actually making me. Well, a little anxious.”

Tolys’ expression changed, his eyes fixed on him now. It made him feel a little self-conscious, to be looked at so intensely— even after all that time, even though it was not the intended effect, and he knew— he felt a warm blush creep up his neck, crawling to the tips of his ears. 

“We are in a temple, like, the ancient temples of Greece. And you look at me, and I’m always naked, and I feel so ashamed… you say something, I don’t remember what, but— at the end, I turn into a statue. I can’t move anymore. And I always wake up feeling so strange, like… like maybe it has really happened, maybe I really can’t move.” 

He had thought about the dream a few times now, but he could not understand what made it so scary, or so real. His memory recalled a few things, for example: the story of Sodom, and the way Lot’s wife turned into a statue of salt.

The steps of the temple, after all, were burning. As he looked forward—back, into the face that was his past, his body turned still. 

An eternal sculpture in his likeness, eternally young, eternally exposed. 

Maybe his mind was just tired to see the reflection of this same body, this same face that never seemed to change. If his flesh had to be a still frame in time, the way it had been for centuries, maybe that was more than he could take, maybe human souls were not made for nations— whatever the hell that title meant, to him and to others.

His memory recalled a bas-relief in Lublin, where a tall, statuary woman held the hand of another in alliance. He remembers how he snorted, thinking  _ ah, that’s not how it went at all _ . 

The woman in gold stood confident; when he first held Lithuania’s hand, his confident golden armour showed its cracks, and his hand was shaking like a leaf. 

(To be honest, the part of him that wanted to swallow away his own pride was glad that no one seemed to remember. 

_ Let people have her, and forget about me. You can have Poland, you can take it away from me again… after hundreds of years, I deserve to rest. _ )

* * *

Tolys seemed to be looking for answers at the bottom of his empty coffee cup, like a fortune teller looking for the future into the shapes of tea leaves.

“I don’t know, Feliks, I can’t wrap my mind around it. Have you tried sleep medication? It worked wonders for me.”

“Oh, come on. I thought you always had answers for like, everything.”

“You’re the smart one, here…”

“You know I’m so not.”

“I would say otherwise, Lord Polska.”

The way he said that made Feliks smile. “I see.”

“You know, I tend to get nightmares whenever I’m stressed. Maybe you just need to take a break.”

“A break from what, exactly? I hardly have a job anymore. It’s like, replying to emails in the morning, and a meeting per week, and that’s it.”

“Work is not the only thing that can cause you stress, Feliks. There’s other things, like...”

“Like what?”

Tolys’ gaze avoided him all of a sudden. His green eyes looked almost grey, clouded by his thoughts— a storm. 

“Like, I don’t know, maybe something in our relationship is stressing you out.”

Feliks’ knees went weak for a split second.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“What— oh,  _ no _ — Feliks…”

The fabric of Tolys’ shirt was scratchy on his cheeks.

He wondered if that was also made of linen, one hundred percent organic, or whatever.

Not like it mattered. When he held him like that, it was as if nothing else in the world mattered.

He closed his eyes and let the tears flow, he let his thoughts flow with them.

In a dark and muffled place, Tolys’ slender fingers ran through his hair, and the throb of his heart was so close, and so far at the same time. 

He said something, something about love, what was it?

Feliks could not hear, he could not remember. 

* * *

He opened his eyes, and his face was once again messy, and wet. 

As soon as he raised his chin to look up, Tolys’ lips met his own with a kiss. He tastes like coffee, and salt, and awful morning breath— it was disgusting, and the best thing ever. 

“It’s alright, it’s alright, you misunderstood…” 

His voice was soothing, a murmur, a lullaby. 

“I mean, maybe we should spend more time together. We could go on vacation, we could go at the seaside. Would you like that?”

Feliks held him tight, pressing his chest closer, as close as he could, and it still seemed too far.

“Right now, I just want to stay like this… just a little longer…”

“It’s alright. We can. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

He looked up, he saw that Tolys was smiling, the smile that he loved so dearly, and— when you see the same face, the same face for hundreds of years, it’s easy to take note of the changes— he noticed the heavy bags under Tolys’ eyes, or had they always been there?

_ My god, we have gotten so old, both of us… _

The clock ticked, the coffee turned cold on the kitchen counter, but he decided, it didn’t matter at all. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! It's Ivan here. I'm sorry it took so long for me to write something else; I've been into a bit of emotional turmoil lately, but this is what I have for y'all!  
I tend to always write super introspective fics, and for once, I wanted one that wasn't focused just on the thoughts of characters, but on bodies, sensations, even mundane ones... hopefully this was a decent read- let me know what you think in the comments, and thank you so so much for reading to the end!! Your support always means the world to me, seriously. n_n


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